Two opposing views on celebration of war

I was pleased to hear the plans proposed by David Cameron to commemorate in two years' time the start of World War One. I have visited the Flanders area on several occasions after discovering that my uncle had been killed in action and is buried in France.

When we travel to my uncle's final resting place we visit many cemeteries and the CWGC are to be congratulated on the appearance in respect of the thousands of commonwealth heroes who gave their lives for our future.

While I hope that Bath will join in these commemorations, they currently do not give our heroes the respect our local casualties deserve.

I attach a photograph taken of one of our heroes in Smallcombe Cemetery where he lies buried with three other casualties. Bath may like to start here prior to 2014 to honour our locals and re-instate their graves to the honour they deserve.

MALCOLM MITCHELL The Moorings Sydney Wharf Bath

I was shocked and depressed to hear our PM talking about the centenary of World War One as something to celebrate, and suggesting that such celebrations were essential to our sense of nationhood, and that the message should be taken into schools around the land.

And this on a day that began with worries that the potential lowering of the voting age would see politics taken into schools. Militarism and nationalism combine to make a pretty toxic ideology that our young people would be better off without, as would the rest of us.

War is the scourge of humanity and we should be not celebrating but lamenting the fact that 100 years on from a particularly brutal and senseless war, in which so much of the youth of this nation and others were maimed, driven mad and slaughtered, we should have learned nothing but still be seeing our endless commitment to warfare as something to glory in. That is not the message given by old soldiers like Harry Patch.

Could we not use this anniversary as an opportunity for deep reflection and events designed to promote a new, determined and urgent quest for demilitarisation and the development of capacities for negotiation, quiet diplomacy and the serious study of nonviolent people power and its potential. That is what is needed for the future of our nation and all others.

Comments

"Then why not wait and commemorate the end of the war?"
We do, every year on Nov 11th.
And who glories in the horrors of the First World War? I doubt even the "Daily Mail readership" do, so I just don't understand your point.

Because, unfortunately, Cameron and his party's logic-free knee-jerk solutions are becoming very predictable. I will bookmark this thread and return to say I told you so.
I suggest you do the same, just in case.

Then why not wait and commemorate the end of the war? We don't celebrate the invention of slavery or the introduction of Thalidomide, so why celebrate the fact we knowingly sent millions to their deaths for the sake of imperialism? Harry Patch himself called it legalised mass murder; we should be hanging our heads in shame.
If this turns out to be a low-key sympathetic and apologetic commemoration then fine. But I fully expect we will be subjected to yet another enforced jingoistic flag-waving fiasco with yet another fly-past of whatever planes the RAF has left, commemorating nothing except the Mail readership's sense of self-satisfaction.

Nobody is talking about a celebration. It is a rememberance of those who made the ultimate sacrifice 100 years after the start of the war. It's likely to be the last ever rememberance specific to the 1914-18 Great War. Put the politics away and show some respect.

Commemorating the dead is one thing. Celebrating the START of a war is quite another.
I fear Cameron's plans will be realised in typically brutish, unsympathetic conservative fashion. I also worry that there may be a political motive behind the rallying of national sentiment just as the union is in danger of splitting.

"Why is it that yesterday we called death by another man's hand murder or manslaughter, but now it is called glorious bravery and valour?" Attributed to Lady Ottoline Morrell at the time of the 'Great War'.

Talk about strawmen.
Diana, who on earth is "seeing our endless commitment to warfare as something to glory in"?
Surely such cathartic events as WWI do give us a sense of nationhood, for better or ill, and should be remembered and pondered from time to time.
BTW, Harry Patch was just one of many - my grandfather and uncles also fought in the trenches, saw and experienced terrible things, and whilst acknowledging the horrors of war, they were proud to have served. Don't let Harry's later pronouncements be allowed to speak for all those men.